


Children of faith and fate

by Catherines_Collections



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Bookman are walking tragedies but so are exorcist and finders I suppose, Character Study, Exorcist are death walking, Fate fears her exorcist more than she loves them, He just fails to realize it, Lavi is a bit in love with each of them, Multi, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, hanging on by a thread, my poor emotional dependent children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-08 18:54:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10393878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: Lavi cannot count, not on all of his fingers and toes combined, how often he has truly believed himself to be facing death for the final time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this late at night, I love it, the first thing I have written for months, and thankfully it's for this fandom. I own nothing, I hope you enjoy!

Lavi cannot count, not on all of his fingers and toes put together, how many times he has truly believed himself to be facing death for the final time. 

Oftentimes it's an Akuma, a direct attack from evil, from the devil himself, out searching for sorrow and itching for pain, reeking of death. And as often as the lot of them are together - four exorcist always tilting over the edge of something invisible and unsteady, staring at the abyss beneath it, swaying and waiting for the house of cards they each live in to collapse; each of them weighed down by each other's burdens, the world's, the order's, the general's, and their families and friends on top of that, never mind their own - well, he imagines they make a promising site for a death starved creature. 

While often times it is the direct attacks that have him repeating prayers beneath his breath in a language long dead and forgotten, the remnants of his mother tongue imprinted into the pieces of himself he refuses to let time touch, refuses to allow anyone to see - not even Bookman is exempt. Every secret has exclusions - and sending mental apologies to Bookman each time he prepares his hammer for another blow - the years he spent to train a new Bookman all ruined by the hands of the devil's creatures he was warned so carefully to beware - the indirect attacks take up a number of close incidents as well. 

Sometimes it's fire. Leftover from an attack - their's or the enemies, no one is ever completely sure. Friendly fire occurs too often in war. Lavi knows. It is something he has recorded hundreds of times in tens of different battles. Men dying by their friend's misplaced hand, misguided shots, and cannons positioned the wrong way. In the end, the blood of each side looks the same: a dark, staining red leaking from rotting flesh - and sometimes it's other things.

Sometimes it's collapsed buildings and suffocation, head wounds that won't stop bleeding after you are slammed into a wall too hard by the after effects of an attack. Sometimes it's drowning, others falling: being crushed, shot at too many times to count and choking on your own blood as the bullets sink into your flesh (it feels even worse, somehow, when you aren't the intended target).

These, he often thinks wryly, are even considered the acceptable pains, the merciful deaths, for exorcist. To become an Akuma - to have your soul ripped back into something other than your body, and then to feel the slow corruption of yourself with every killing: some intended and others accidental - is a fate worse than death.

Lavi shivers and remembers what is rehearsed by exorcist battling daily, a reminder of what you are risking yourself for, what you are protecting: to die from any number of tragedies must be better than this. 

(Better to die by the hands of the creatures you are forced to fight than to become one of them.) 

Then he remembers the Bookman's proverbs, to observe and record: at any price, for the sake of knowledge, the sake of history. Something bigger than yourself, something bigger than Akuma and exorcist and the Earl. 

A Bookman's purpose, he knows, is to record the history not all of mankind will get to see, through an impartial viewpoint: though often skewed towards the Order. No attachments is rule number one, always have an alias is rule two. And he lives up to the rules partially at least.

He thinks like a Bookman, keeps the name Lavi - thinks,  49th every time he hears Lenalee and Kanda say it, thinks, not mine, never really mine each time Allen's laugh holds his name - but he breaks it partially as well. He thinks as a Bookman, records as one too, but he fights as an exorcist: as an ally to people whose deaths he will one day have to record with an impartial view and somber expression. 

He fights as an exorcist - bleeds along side them, burns and drowns and breathes, thinks,  thank God, alleluia alleluia alleluia after each time a battle is won - with a familiarity he should be ashamed of. 

(There's a part of him, one he does not acknowledge often and yet it still lurks, that thinks it will be nice to have people to miss him when he is dead.) 

Lavi has faced death more times than he can count - battlefields bleed into ruined villages and villages bleed into empty eyed exorcist engaging in a hopeless battle against creatures with twisted souls - each time closer than the last, a mere breath away, and yet. 

And yet it is Kanda who saves him from being crushed, helps him to flee from the horrors of suffocation, as he cuts down the beast depriving him of air. 

It's is Lenalee who saves them all from rampant fires, a slight rotation of her ankle stealing all of the oxygen from the flames, releasing them all safely from harm. 

It is Allen who throws himself in the path of bullets that poison and rot, and smiles humbly at Lavi behind him, silent and mouthing are you alright? as his skin speckles with stars and the same poison that has killed thousands of men before him, courses through his veins. 

Lavi laughs. Laughs as he raises his hammer to strike down the monsters before them. Laughs as Kanda and Lenalee cut and slice both the monster and themselves, and Allen takes more bullets to his temple than he should. 

He laughs because it's absurd - Yuu's protection, Lenalee's fierce saving, Allen's shielding.

Lavi laughs, strikes the beast below him on the skull for the final time and watches as its body burns and dissolves into dust. 

(He laughs, looks at the faces of the people he calls his friends - watches as they throw themselves before him, and watches as he follows suit, and thinks: what have I done? Have I fooled them so well? It makes him sick to think but his brain does not relent.

He thinks of Allen's narrow smiles, Lenalee's sharp eyes, Kanda's firm gaze, and he thinks no, of course not, no what a miscalculation he has made by thinking they were never onto him; that they never saw right through him, and fought along his side anyway.) 

He laughs because if he does not he may cry, and direct his gaze up into the sky at the glaring stars and pitiless moon, where God is said to be, and scream: You coward! You coward, leaving your work to children too young, too clumsy, too hopeful, to be disciples. Too young to be wishing so desperately for death. You coward, placing the stumbling blocks I prayed against for so long, directly in my path.

He laughs and drops his hammer long after the creature is gone, and soon after they all gather around him: injured but not dead, harmed but alive, and that is all that matters in the end. 

Damage you can recover from; death not so much, as the Earl and the monsters he has created so love to prove.

Lavi laughs, Lenalee smiles, Kanda grunts, and Allen heals. 

All the while he thinks, alleluia, not this time, not yet, alleluia, as he gently brushes against each of them on their way back: a light dust of his hand over Lenalee's, a gentle ruffle of Allen's hair, a careful knocking of his shoulder against Kanda's.

They are kind to pretend not to notice what he is doing and kinder, even so, to indulge him.

(Allen shakes his head, hair still falling in the direction Lavi has pushed it into, and sighs, lips upturned into a kind and playful smile. Lenalee hides her giggles of relief and tearful eyes behind her hands as she rubs them down her face, small hiccups escaping in the place of laughter as she runs one of her hands gently over the other. Kanda only glares, gaze refusing to stray from its intended path, but there is no annoyed grunt or disgusted shove and he makes no move to move away, so all in all Lavi counts it as a win.)

Eventually his laughter subsides, he calms it from feral and unhinged to humorous and playful, but his smile does not. 

Lavi has faced death more times than he can count on both his fingers and toes combined, and yet, somehow, he survives.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! Comments and kudos are much appreciated and I am rhymesofblue on tumblr if you wanna come scream with me about this series:)!


End file.
